Eritrean president slams 'CIA-financed' media

Last week, President Isaias
Afeworki of Eritrea,
Africa's leading jailer of journalists,
discussed press freedom during an extensive interview with Swedish
broadcaster TV4. Afeworki, a revered guerrilla
commander who led this Red Sea country to nationhood in 1993, banned Eritrea's
budding private media in 2001 and threw journalists in secret prisons without
charge or trial. Speaking to Swedish
journalist Donald Boström from his palace in the capital, Asmara, Afeworki, at left, took questions on the fate
of long-held journalist Dawit
Isaac, an Eritrean with Swedish citizenship, and lashed out at critics of
the country's press freedom record.

Isaac and nine other
editors of now-banned private newspapers have disappeared in government custody
since a brutal 2001crackdown on dissenting voices. Asked which crime
Isaac, the one-time co-owner of Eritrea's
once-leading private weekly Setit,had committed, the president declared,
"I don't know." He went on: "I don't even care where he is or what he is doing.
He did a big mistake." Afeworki declined to comment on a follow-up question
about the nature of the alleged "mistake."

In a 2004 interview
with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in response to a question about
the late journalist Fesshaye
Yohannes, Afeworki said, "I don't know
him." Yohannes died in prison.

But the president
claimed better knowledge of Eritrea's
once-outspoken private press, which he brutally silenced nearly eight years
ago. "There were no private media," he said, adding: "The CIA would finance
newspapers, hire journalists, open bank accounts for them outside the country
and give them what they have to write in their papers. This is not media."

What is media in Eritrea
today are government-run outlets producing propaganda under tight supervision.
Many state media journalists have fled the country citing intense censorship,
intimidation or arbitrary imprisonment, and some, like Paulos Kidane have even
died while trying. In late 2007, authorities expelled Peter
Martell, a foreign correspondent based in Asmara,
for refusing to name sources who had expressed disillusionment for the
government.

For Afeworki, however,
"no one is prevented from freedom of speech." Authorities even recently
published an editorial
on the Eritrean government's Web site called "The Culture of Openness: Unique
and Fabulous Eritrean Value."

The president told his
Swedish interviewer: "The fight is always between those who want to
control the media and control freedom of speech for their own end and the
people at large who would like to have free ways of expression."

And when asked whether
Isaac would be released or taken to court, Afeworki declared: "No, we don't
release him. We don't take [him] to trial. We know how to deal with him and
others like him and we have our own ways of dealing with that."

Mohamed Keita is advocacy coordinator for CPJ's Africa Program. Keita has written about independent journalism and development in sub-Saharan Africa for publications including The New York Times and Africa Review, and has appeared on NPR, the BBC, Al-Jazeera, and Radio France Internationale. Keita has also given presentations on press freedom at the World Bank, U.S. State Department, and universities. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ.

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